London Borough of Barnet

Fraud investigation

The council has a Corporate Anti Fraud Team (CAFT), which is a specialist investigative unit established to investigate allegations of fraud and irregularities, including:

  • housing and council tax benefit fraud
  • council tax discount fraud
  • housing tenancy fraud
  • procurement fraud
  • payroll and pension fraud
  • other kinds of internal fraud, bribery, corruption or money laundering activity. 

CAFT's role is to assist the council in protecting the public purse through the facilitation of sound strategies, procedures and controls in the prevention, detection, investigation and deterrence of fraud, corruption and bribery.   

They operate under a set of procedural documents called the Counter Fraud Framework. The staff in CAFT are either qualified Fraud Investigators and/or Financial Investigators or hold other professional qualifications. 

The CAFT also identifies and corrects fraud and error across the council by exchanging data with other organisations. This is mostly done by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) - Housing Benefit Data Matches and the Audit Commissions National Fraud Initiative Benefit Matches.  

This exercise matches electronic data within Barnet Council and other public and private sector bodies in order to prevent and detect fraud. This includes other councils, police authorities, DWP, HMRC, UK Border Agency, local probation boards, fire and rescue authorities as well as a number of private sector bodies. Any discrepancies are looked into by the CAFT and further investigated if required.

The London Borough of Barnet is committed to zero tolerance of fraud, corruption, bribery and/or money laundering within or against the organisation, public money, its partners, contractors and also the community it serves.

If you would like to report a fraud you can do so by using the online reporting form or by calling:

Fraud hotline: 020 8359 2007
Whistleblowing line: 020 8359 6123